Fixer-Upper
by Crave Kashmir
Summary: Ron and Hermione attempt to fix their new house the Muggle way.


A/N: Just a quick little story to get me back into writing again. Hate to admit it, but I haven't written anything new since August 2012. (!) I wrote and typed it over morning coffee, and have not had it Beta-ed. Please PM me if you see any typos or grammatical issues.

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Fixer Upper

His arms were beginning to shake. Understandable considering he had been holding the manual aloft for nearly an hour while Hermione inspected the damage hiding behind their hundred-year-old plaster. She pulled another clump of ceiling away from the framing, making Ron sneeze and flinch as the dust fell into his eyes.

"Would you please hold still? I can't read if you keep moving around like that," Hermione chided.

"I'm tired," he said, dropping his arms. "We've been at this for hours. Why can't we just fix it with magic?"

His wife sighed. It was a sigh he knew well as the one that preceded one of her well-formulated and impossible-to-dispute arguments. "Because this is a mixed street, Ron. The Wizard families wouldn't care, but the Muggle families opposite and next door would notice if we moved in too quickly; they know the state this house is in."

"Then why can't we get someone in, like that bloke who came around to Number 47 in a white van this morning?"

"We can't afford it on my salary," she admitted. Her shoulders slumped dejectedly as she turned and sat down on a wide rung of the ladder. Her deep brown eyes scanned the room, taking in the bare, crumbling walls, the peeling paint, the floors in desperate need of a good refinishing; he knew what she saw because it's what he had seen the moment they walked in behind the estate agent. The two women had practically swooned at the potential of the place, but all Ron had seen was a dirty and broken house.

Hermione gave a sigh of defeat. "Maybe we ought to have waited. We could have saved up some money letting a flat until you finished Auror training."

He rubbed her arms consolingly, adding to the thick layer of dust covering her skin. If there was one thing he hated, it was watching his wife give up. She never gave up, not against anything, and he would not let her be defeated by a bloody house. "That's another eighteen months. The cost of letting would have been twice the mortgage. You did the maths yourself, 'Mione, you know buying was best."

"I know that," she agreed. "It's just so much more work than I'd thought."

Ron fought the urge to snort, knowing it would not help her mood to inform her that he had known what they were getting into from day one. Helpful. He had to be helpful. "Maybe we could fix a bit of it with magic and then do the easier repairs the Muggle way. I'm brilliant at construction charms. Did up the attic at the Burrow all on my own."

Her mouth pulled down further, past her despondent frown and into a look of mild horror at the thought. "No, I don't think so. I've seen the state of that framing."

"Oi! I was using a hand-me-down wand! _And_ I was only nine when I did it. I didn't know about right angles and things yet. I learned how to build watching Fred and George make their room."

She blinked slowly. "You each made your own room?"

"Yeah, why do you think the house is so wobbly? There's a reason Percy's is the only room with a level floor." He shrugged and picked the book back up, studying the diagrams his wife had been using to gauge the integrity of their antique house. It took him two pages to realise she had not replied. He glanced up at her and saw her pretty features arranged into Thinking Face No. 7 – brow knitted tightly, nostrils only slightly flared, lips pulled together at the sides to make a tempting little pout. It was a look she rarely used for anything other than him, but he couldn't think what he had done or said to deserve it.

"What?" he questioned uneasily.

Thinking Face No. 7 remained in place a moment longer as she considered him. He shifted uncomfortably even as he hoped it might mean a reconsideration about using magic instead of muscle.

"Nothing," she said and shook her head. "Why don't you climb up and have a look?"

"Really?"

She hopped off the ladder and gestured for him to climb. The house was so old and short, he almost didn't need the ladder to see into the ceiling, but he took hold of the sides eagerly and all but ran up the rungs. He closed one eye and peered down the length of the timbres one by one. "The beams are straight," he called down to her. "I'd like a cross-brace just to make sure they stay that way, though."

"I'll make a list," Hermione shouted up.

He climbed further up the ladder until he had nowhere to put his feet but onto the house itself. Taking a breath, he dared to put his weight onto the ancient wooden beams; they groaned but did not give, so he moved away from the hole to investigate the trusses. At the centre of the house, he could almost stand to his full height. It allowed him to view the entire attic at once and to gather all the information he needed from the structure. "It looks fine up here. If we put down some eight-by-fours we could use this as a storage space," he told her. "With a little _you-know-what_ we could even make it tall enough to be a whole set of rooms. It would only take a few inches, six at most."

"The neighbours might notice," she replied, but he could tell by her tone that she was giving it thought.

"Do it on a foggy day, they'd never know!"

"But what about—"

"Hermione," he all but shouted. "Trust me. The house is fine. I can fix it"

"But—"

"Hermone!" He stomped down the ladder, not caring that the rungs creaked more than the turn-of-the-century beams did under his weight. "Will you stop arguing? I can do it. If you do the maths for me, it will be better than if we hired some Muggle Mr Fix-It. It will be the only level house on the street. And, more important, it will be _ours_."

"Ours," she repeated. She looked away from him to the bare, crumbling walls, peeling paint, floors thick with a century of grime, cracked ceiling, and he knew she didn't see any of it. "Ours," she said again, voice full of wonder.

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A/N: This story is inspired by my real life. I've inherited a house in absolute disrepair. (Read: No drywall; no bathroom fixtures; termite AND water damage, and the list goes on). I spent a year staring at it in horror wishing I had magic to fix it.

The universe didn't send me magic, however, it did send me Baptists! A crew of volunteers came through last week! A whirlwind of awesome, they were. They replaced every window in the house, both entry doors, removed all the water and termite damaged wood and replaced it with new. It was AMAZING! The light at the end of the tunnel is no longer the train coming to mow me down.


End file.
